MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange has joined a lawsuit to block California from requiring all eggs sold within its borders come from farms that use larger-than-normal cages for the humane treatment of the birds.

In a press release, Strange's office said the suit would "stop California from imposing on Alabama and other states its own standards requiring that eggs be sold only from chickens that live in roomy, larger-than-normal cages."

"In Alabama, consumers are free to make their own choice of which eggs to buy at their grocery stores, and it is preposterous and quite simply wrong for California to tell Alabama how we must produce eggs," Strange said in a statement.

"This is not an animal-welfare issue; it is about California's attempt to protect its economy from its own job-killing laws by extending those laws to everyone else in the country."

Hens in battery cages at an egg farm in Brazil. (Wikimedia Commons)

The suit challenges California's 2008 Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which applies to chickens and other livestock and requires caged egg-laying hens to be confined only in a manner that enables them to lie down, stand up, fully extend their limbs and turn around freely.

Initially, the law only applied to California farmers, but provisions were added making it apply to all eggs imported into the state in order to protect California egg producers from having an unfair disadvantage against out-of-state producers.

Since the California law exceeds the industry standard in Alabama and other states, it could close the comparatively large California economy to egg farmers from Alabama and other states.

It could also change the industry standard, forcing egg farmers nationwide to make significant investments upgrading their operations to comply with the California standard.

Alabama is the 15th largest egg producers in the nation, with production totaling 2.14 million eggs in 2012.

States filing the suit, which include Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Iowa, are asking the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California to declare the law invalid and stop its enforcement, which is set to take effect Jan. 1, 2015.